A comedian, a U.S. Poet Laureate, and a sculptor walk into the Canzani Center. There’s no punchline here; this will actually happen this fall as part of the college’s spectacular lineup of exhibitions and visiting artists. So, without further ado or jokes, here is the fall 2013 exhibition and visiting artist & scholar schedule.

Leonardo Drew’s exhibition will close with an artist talk and reception on Aug. 29 at 6 p.m. in the Canzani Center Auditorium.

Jeff Smith’sRASL will be next up. The exhibition is organized in conjunction with Smith’s keynote presentation on Sept. 27 at the Mix 2013 Comics Symposium. It looks closely at the influences behind RASL (Smith’s newest graphic novel)—including music, literature, process artwork, and sculptural manifestations of the narrative.

Smith’s exhibition, which is up Sept. 5–Oct. 4, will be accompanied by four other exhibitions. (Did we mention we had a very busy fall exhibition schedule?)

Also in the Canzani Center Gallery Sept. 5–Oct. 4 will be Kirk Hayes’ Rule by Fear, Gary Panter’s The Magnetic Lady, and Martha Colburn’s Camera, Lights, Charge, Pop. And in our project space, ROOM, we will have Loud Flash: British Punk on Paper, work from the collection of Toby Mott. All five exhibitions will be celebrated at an opening reception Sept. 5, 6–8 p.m., featuring a gallery talk at 5 p.m. by Vivien Goldman, the “punk professor” from BBC America.

Hayes’ work has a dark, humorous tone, and he uses a self-taught process of trompe l’oeil oil painting—which can fool the eye into thinking the compositions are made up of cardboard and scraps of plywood.

Artist and designer Panter is considered one of the founders of the Los Angeles punk aesthetic. He is also a three-time Emmy award winner for his production design on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. He’ll give an artist talk followed by a reception on Sept. 23.

Mile Birbiglia

Colburn, who is a multimedia filmmaker and musician, will give a performance with film and live music on Oct. 3. Her exhibition will feature manipulated-found-footage stop-animation films, Polaroids, and large-scale collages.

Comedian and filmmaker Mike Birbiglia will break up our artist talks with some good laughs on Oct. 9. His most recent project, Sleepwalk with Me, was nominated for both a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Circle Critics Award for Best Solo Performance. The off-Broadway show was also turned into a critically acclaimed film. Tickets for his performance are $25 and go on sale Aug. 26 on his event page.

Think we’re done yet? Not even close.

While you are enjoying laughs from Birbiglia, we’ll be setting up the My Crippled Friend exhibition in the Canzani Center Gallery. The show features work from 25 artists and investigates the recent history of the intersection of painterly abstraction and the object.

My Crippled Friend will be accompanied by five artist talks. The first will be from poet, art critic, and curator John Yau on Oct. 11, followed by painter Joe Fyfe on Oct. 24, painter Chris Johanson on Oct. 31, sculptor Kathy Butterly on Nov. 13, art critic, art historian, and multimedia artist Cheryl Donegan on Dec. 5.

Current U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is coming to speak on Oct. 16 in conjunction with her book Thrall being chosen as this year’s summer reading assignment for incoming freshmen. Thrall is a follow-up volume to Trethewey’s 2007 Pulitzer-Prize-winning collection Native Guard, which looks at the racial divide between the poet and her father.

Author and filmmaker Miranda July will present LOST CHILD! on Nov. 18. LOST CHILD! is part retrospective, part artist lecture, and part interactive performance. And finally, poet Holland Cotter will give an artist talk on Nov. 21.